This post is a month overdue.

Glastonbury is huge, isn’t it? To the point that you can’t possibly comprehend its size unless you go. Everyone tells you how massive it is, and you know it will be, but not to this extent.

We arrived Wednesday lunchtime, left Monday morning, and barely stopped drinking in between times. I had a fucking blast. Wednesday was spent hanging about drinking with our camping neighbours, exploring the site, and more drinking. I fell asleep up the hill near the stone circle for a while, just after looking over the whole site in the almost dark and thinking how amazing and huge it was.

Thursday was weird. Apparently a much larger amount of people arrived earlier this year, so by the time Maximo Park came on to ‘open’ the festival on the small Queen’s Head stage, you couldn’t get near that area of the site, let alone in the tent to see the band. We wandered, we drank Brothers Cider (amazing), we saw some of Golden Silvers and possibly another band, and then we saw East 17. That was weird. The tent was packed, they came and did ‘Steam’ and then proceeded to do about 7 songs, including a couple of terrible new ones, and finished with ‘Stay Another Day’. As soon as they finished, we started getting texts telling us Michael Jackson was dead. We didn’t believe it first, then we did, then went around telling strangers, and they didn’t believe us. Weird day.

  • Stornoway
  • Golden Silvers
  • Beardyman
  • East 17

Friday was the first day of proper music, and I was a bit overexcited and ended up peaking too early. The end of the day is a haze. The start of the day was pretty much the only rain we saw all weekend. I did, however, see The Rumble Strips who were surprisingly amazing, Slow Club play ‘Christmas TV’ at the entrance to the Guardian Lounge after I got a telling off for trying to sneak in, an always-exuberant Fucked Up, a dull Fleet Foxes and many more. Bands seen:

  • The Perceptions
  • Rumble Strips
  • Slow Club
  • Fucked Up
  • Filthy Dukes
  • The Virgins
  • N*E*R*D
  • Fleet Foxes
  • Lily Allen
  • The Specials

Saturday. Woken up at 5am by Paddy and Colin coming back destroyed from the Eagles of Death Metal gig at Trash City (which the band didn’t turn up to) and putting the world to rights. Fell asleep till about 8am, then had to go and regain my sanity with a solo mission to the guardian Lounge. That place is a godsend. I sat on a comfy armchair, read that day’s Guardian, had a croissant and a smoothie and listened to soothing music. It made me feel human again. the day was spent watching trying not to get too drunk too early. Saw some really good bands, but two stick out above the rest by far. At about 5pm while watching Emmy the Great, I suddenly remembered the Futureheads secret show was happening close by in half an hour. We arrived to find hardly anyone there. A (marvellous) comedian was doing his thing and people were sitting on the grass chatting. When it was announced that the band were coming on, we ended up standing right at the barrier, right in the middle. The Futureheads played a short hits-heavy set while we downed as much coder as humanly possible. It was amazing. Later on that night, having randomly bumped into friends we hadn’t been able to contact all weekend because of bad phone reception, we took up a spot on the hill for The Boss. It was fucking amazing. Best time I’ve had in ages. That’s all. Bands seen:

  • The Low Anthem
  • Metric
  • Temper Trap
  • Spinal Tap
  • Broken Records
  • Emmy the Great
  • The Futureheads
  • Crosby, Stills and Nash
  • Passion Pit
  • Peter, Bjorn and John
  • Florence and the Machine
  • Bruce Springsteen

Sunday was pretty grim. We were destroyed from days of alcohol abuse and had no energy left. It was hot, we were dehydrated. I felt dizzy most of the day. We saw some really good stuff though, including highlights Amadour et Mariam, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Tony Christie clearly hating ‘Amarillo’, and Blur. I had been really looking forward to Blur all weekend, but not as much as some bands. What they pulled off was one of the best performances I’ve ever seen. The atmosphere was absolutely incredible. Bands seen:

  • Micachu and the Shapes
  • Art Brut
  • Tony Christie
  • Amadou et mariam
  • Tom Jones
  • Yeah Yeah Yeahs
  • Madness
  • Roots Manuva
  • Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
  • Blur

The whole point of Glastonbury is that there is much more to it than just watching bands, which makes it different to every other festival I’ve been to. We wandered around a lot and saw some of the sights of Glasto, like the green fields (hardcore crusties terrify me though) as well as cafes and theatre tents and the stone circle and dance tents and loads of people in weird costumes and all sorts of weird interesting shit. I just can’t really remember that much about it.